Using Keywords For Strategic SEO

We’ve all heard of the importance of keywords regarding SEO, however far too many clients and people doing their own SEO get confused. This is why knowing what to do with keywords on a site is of utmost importance.

First of all, just slapping keywords on your site is a big mistake. It is professionally called ‘keyword stuffing’. This practice worked in the old days of SEO but doing it now will get you penalized by Google and other search engines and that kind of penalty could be devastating and usually is.

The key to success with keywords and SEO, is the technical and strategic placing of keywords, keyphrases, and keygroups, that not only meet the technical and industry standards, but show exacting results in the short and long term.

Of course the website has to have the primary keywords in the URL, the meta description, the title, and the primary copy. These keyword placements should be fluid and not just slapped up there to fool the search engines. That won’t work anymore. What is needed is basic placement and then provide those keywords incorporated into the copy, graphics, pictures, videos, and links. The wise approach is to have at least one of the main content options on the page. Google indexes pages, not websites, so each page of your website should have the basics and that means pics, vids, graphics, copy, links that have that keyword in their titles, descriptions, and of course tags.

Providing these keywords attached to content is a way of showing the search engines that your site has the basic ingredients, placed properly. Don’t overdo it. Don’t add the same cookie cutter keyword placement on every page. For example if you have a video on page 1 of your site and it’s titled ‘Dog Grooming Fun In Houston, Texas’, because you own a dog grooming company there, you’ve done two things properly. You’ve got ‘dog grooming’ and locale as in ‘Houston, Texas’ in the title of the video. In the description you would put ‘A funny video of our dog grooming services in Houston, Texas.’. Well it’s got the keywords but it’s not the same as the title. Now, on another page on your website, you have another video. This one would be titled ‘Comical Dog Grooming Videos in Houston, Texas’. See? The title is different but also contains the right keywords. Now the description would be different from the previous video. A description like, ‘You’ll roll on the floor looking at this comical dog grooming video in Houston, Texas’. Different content, different titles and descriptions. This should be done with all visual content on every page on your site. Don’t put too much content on the pages that make them load slow though.

As for copy. Your copy must be written by a professional. A professional with SEO acumen. The SEO copywriter will know how and where to put your primary keywords and keyphrases and key groups the correct way. Here you cannot do any form of keyword stuffing or you will be doomed. Copy should flow naturally like a person would communicate to another. Your copy should communicate like a friend to the surfer. This copy has to engage the surfer to not only convert to a customer, but to mention your site on social media with your keywords. Why? Because the surfer will be ‘seeding’ the web with references to your site and using the primary keywords. Google and the other search engines will see this activity and associate those keywords with your site in relation to the several fundamental factors.

Let not your website be the source of your keyword strategies. Social media, as mentioned earlier, is a powerful venue for upholding your SEO goals. Make posts with you URL and other pertinent data, but make sure your keywords, keyphrases, and key groups can be incorporated into your posts and not look spammy. The search engines will see this and associate it with your site, thus boosting your rankings. Do the same with posting on your Facebook pages and especially with comments to others’ posts. Put those keywords and URL in your signatures so while posting to message boards the search engines will crawl that info too. It takes good common sense and planning regarding SEO and keyword efficiency. Take your time and be consistent and you’ll see results in the short and long term.